A picture of my only daughter, during her first pregnancy. Una foto de mi única hija, durante su primer embarazo.

Happy Mother’s Day to all of you who celebrate it today. Un feliz día de las madres a todos los que lo celebran hoy.

May all mothers and their children in the whole wide world finally have peace. As many of you know, the original Mother’s Day in the U.S. was a protest for peace and against injustice and war. Julia Ward Howe, pacifist, poet, and suffragist, in 1870 after the Civil War wrote a proclamation to honor a day in which mothers could oppose war. Women had previously opposed war, at times denying sexual favors to their husbands to prevent their participation in wars.

In commemoration of Ward Howe’s poem (BELOW) and the ongoing desire for peace, I, mother of four sons and a daughter, participated in a Mother’s Day event in the Poconos, Pennsylvania, just before Cindy Sheehan went on her pilgrimage to ask GWB ‘for what noble cause’ her son had been killed. I met Cindy at the time and joined her in Crawford, Texas when she camped out near GWB’s home…

Arise, all women who have hearts, whether your baptism be that of water or of tears! Say firmly: “We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies, our husbands shall not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause.

“Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience. We women of one country will be too tender of those of another country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.”

From the bosom of the devastated earth a voice goes up with our own. It says, “Disarm, disarm! The sword is not the balance of justice.” Blood does not wipe out dishonor nor violence indicate possession.

As men have often forsaken the plow and the anvil at the summons of war, let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel. Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead. Let them then solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means whereby the great human family can live in peace, each learning after his own time, the sacred impress, not of Caesar, but of God.

In the name of womanhood and of humanity, I earnestly ask that a general congress of women without limit of nationality may be appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient and at the earliest period consistent with its objects, to promote the alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement of international questions, the great and general interests of peace.

Each night a nightmare as I listen for his voice

each day a darkness as I look for her sweet face. Chorus

Nine months and longer I nurtured in my womb

sweet toes I counted now buried in a tomb. Chorus

All of the best I gave of all I had to give

stories and lullabies now made a requiem. Chorus

So as mothers from Zaire to Afghanistan

we stand together holding hearts and hands

look out world, heed us now, no you can’t

take our hopes, no you won’t take our children to war. Chorus 3X

Yesterday I received a card from my fourth son Carlo, who is in jail, with a barking dog on the cover, which says the barking is dog talk for Happy Mother’s Day! He says: “So on Sunday, when Lucas is barking up his usual storm, know that he is really wishing you the best. From the two of us, we love you, we appreciate you, and wherever you are God is and all is well. And so it is. Love, me.” As I was writing this Carlo called from jail; in 79 days he will be released, Insha’Allah, si Dios quiere, primero Dios.

No more sacrifices to capitalism! ¡No más sacrificios al capitalismo!

Someone told me this was an Arabic saying, which means God willing or if Allah wills, but I grew up in Cuba, and later, when I lived in the Dominican Republic and in Puerto Rico, we always said, right after stating a plan, “si Dios quiere, which means the same thing, and my Guatemalan friends say “primero Dios,” and many of my Mexican friends say “primeramente Dios” or “si Dios me da licencia.” I found this enlightening; there is an ingrained awe of whatsoever we call that higher power that informs us, whether or not we acknowledge it, and for me, it is a source of beauty and of ultimate love. Insha’Allah, God willing, primero Dios.

As I continue on my path toward ordination as a Roman Catholic priest, the Divinity is throwing me interesting curve balls. As many of you know, as an example of one of them, I am sleeping in the house of an 83-year-old widow who came to our clinic a year ago for help from harassment. Things have gotten quickly more abusive, so that I have decided I might as well share whatever it is that is coming her way, and every night I go there and bunk down, lately with Lucas the dog in tow. Lucas is taking advantage of the situation and climbing on the mattress on the floor so that he can protect us both. We both miss his father and my son Carlo, and we are both feeling the Bern!

The Bernie campaign continues to inspire me, and the Hillary campaign continues to sadden me. Every day some otherwise intelligent person attempts to dissuade me of my posture never to vote for Hillary, and to make light of the factors in her past and present history that make her unelectable. Now that Donald Trump is the only candidate left in the Republican Party, this is even more so. I fail to understand how they can’t see that the many ghosts in her particular closets make her unelectable. I am hoping to see him actually in person tomorrow or Tuesday, when he comes to my part of the country.

In the meantime, I have been listening to a recording of Chopra’s God: A Story of Revelation, which I highly recommend, in which he talks about the evolving nature of God. He develops the search for God through several poets and mystics, including Paul, Rumi, Julian of Norwich, and ends with Tagore, and he interlaces mysticism with science, quantum physics with poetry… a joy to read and to listen to, to ponder and to cry over. This campaign has made me appreciate my own mysticism and spirituality more; I don’t want a pragmatic world, where we factor the deaths of children into things or programs or practices. I want to live in a world where children will someday ask, Mommy, what was war? I am still an unrepentant revolutionary hippie, Insha’Allah, God willing, primero Dios.